


Historical Point

by GillO



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jossverse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3865216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GillO/pseuds/GillO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles and Spike agree about something, and there isn't even an apocalypse in sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Historical Point

Buffy has to admit she zones out when Giles starts explaining Literature. (The capital ‘L’ is important.) Willow can get excited enough for both of them, after all. Tara seems to be into it too. 

She snaps her head up when Spike joins in with a cheerful reference to mountains of skulls. He seems really over-excited by the idea and caps it with a detailed (too detailed, thank you very much) account of high walls made of living bodies mortared together.

“So, this is a demon we’re talking about?” she asks. Not that she has been any part of the _we_ doing the talking until now.

“Tamerlane? No, fully human that one. Interesting bloke, full of good ideas. I could get to like him.”

“Spike, you are well aware such stories may have been exaggerated when he entered the mythology. He certainly attracted the poetically-inclined, and poets are not known for an addiction to veracity.”

_Dear Giles,_ she thinks. _Never a single syllable if three will do._ “So, who was this Tam Lynn guy then? Do we need to worry?”

Hey! Eye-rolling is totally her thing! Trademarked! Spike and Giles are so not allowed to do it. And especially not to do it as a secret code between them.

“No, pet. Tamerlane. Timur-i-Lenkh. Tamburlaine. Conquered most of Asia a few centuries back. Buggered up a lot of old cities and such in the process. Did almost as good a number on Baghdad as Uncle Sam’s boys. Shocked and awed them right proper, then minced them up or built walls with them.” There are not enough glares in the world for that insult.

“So? What do we have to kill?”

“Buffy, dear, do try to keep up. We are discussing an assignment Willow has, not a current project. Spike was – ah – favouring us with his opinion.”

“Yeah, and I still say any course worth doing would point you at Marlowe’s take on it, not some drippy consumptive Yank with a yen for horror.”

“I am inclined to agree with you,” Giles nods. Buffy drops her jaw. The world’s ending and she hasn’t noticed?

Willow is patient. “I really don’t think he would fit into an American Poetry class quite so well, do you?”

Spike and Giles have to back down and admit Poe was definitely more American than Marlowe. The discussion continues. Buffy has more or less lost interest; who argues about such stuff anyway? 

Spike has the last word though, looking pointedly at Buffy. “Yeah, lovely bloke. Did for seventeen million, more or less. And know what? He did the lot while he was alive. With a shiny soul of his very own. Human, not demon, not even part-demon.”

That gives her food for thought. Thoughts of a kind she spends the rest of the evening working to ignore.

**Author's Note:**

> A revised version of a fic originally written for the Halloween Challenge at LJ comm SB Fag Ends.


End file.
